Nobody Got 'Rooked' At This Mopar Muscle Meet

June 30, 1985|by LEONARD KUCINSKI, Sunday Call-Chronicle

One of the most unusual car meets of all time is a private event held annually by Don Rook of Pleasant Valley. There's no admission, no entry fee, no judging and no restrictions. Although open to any car that can make its way to Rook's rather remote and difficult to find country property, it is very heavy in Chrysler - or as those in the know say, Mopar - products.

At a recent gathering, some 300 cars showed up, which is more than at many big car meets. Of this number 275 were Mopars and 200 of them were Mopar muscle cars of the late 1960s and early 1970s. There was more muscle there than at Eskimo's Gym on a Saturday morning. It was estimated that the collective horsepower of all of these cars was over 70,000, enough to stagger the imagination of even Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

There were schools of Barracudas, flocks of Road Runners, GTXs by the dozen, R/Ts by the score, more Chargers than in the Light Brigade and enough Challengers to even satisfy Larry Holmes. These mean machines were powered by big-bore, short-stroke, high-compression, overhead valve V-8s such as the 340 Six-Pack, 383 Magnum, 440 High Performance and the feared 426 Hemi. Quite appropriately, there was even a representation of Chrysler 300 "lettered series" cars of the '50s, the first true muscle cars.

Aside from a national meet, this was probably the greatest assemblage of Mopar muscle cars in one location at any time. It was just too much to believe. My young companion at the event was Jed Rapoport, son of Allentown attorney Arnold Rapoport, one of the most knowledgeable car enthusiasts around. The older Rapoport couldn't make it to Rook's that day and Jed kept saying, "Dad's not going to believe this." To which I answered, "I don't even believe it . . . and I'm here."

Without rehashing too much ancient history, the muscle car or factory performance car era began in the mid-50s and reached its peak in the late '60s and early '70s. They were done in by the combined forces of federal emission standards, high insurance rates and rapid increase in the price of gasoline. Over the last couple of years, though, there has been increased interest in these cars as collectors items. With so many of these cars wrecked, butchered or just run into the ground, good examples are not that easy to find. This, too, made Rook's meet so unusual since all of the Mopar muscle cars present were good examples. There were some modifications but no real hammer jobs.

Rook, who started out as a collector of Packards but then branched out to Chrysler 300s and other interesting Chrysler products, was a little apprehensive about having all this muscle gathered in one place but said there were no problems and no trouble. "There was only one burnout," he said an added somewhat disdainfully, "and that was by someone driving a '73Mustang." Once again the Mopars behaved admirably while the Fords ran rampant.

In addition to the Mopar muscle, there were also a couple of other interesting, though smaller, gatherings of cars. For example, there were two 1968 Stageway "stretched" Imperial limos. This may not sound so impressive but when you consider there were only six such conversions produced that year by Stageway, it doesn't take too long to figure out that here was one-third of the year's production. There were four Grahams at the event. Again, at first not too impressive, but it was the most Grahams ever gathered at a local Graham Club meet. All-in-all, as they say in the old car hobby, everybody had a good time.